My Baby s Daddy (2003)

January 10, 2004

FILM REVIEW; Boyz N a New Hood (Fatherhood, That Is)

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: January 10, 2004

''My Baby's Daddy,'' a new comedy that opened nationwide yesterday, has a not-bad (though not-too-original) premise and a sweet attitude. The movie, directed by Cheryl Dunye from a committee-written script, follows three bachelor buddies on a journey toward maturity initiated by the simultaneous pregnancy of their girlfriends.

G (Anthony Anderson), an aspiring boxer who works in a corner deli, impregnates his boss's daughter, Xi-Xi (Bai Ling). Lonnie (Eddie Griffin, who is also one of the screenwriters), does the same to Rolanda (Paula Jai Parker), the trashy, selfish gold digger who has walked all over him since childhood. Dominic (Michael Imperioli), who manages an obnoxious white-boy hip-hop act, stumbles into paternity after a fling with Nia (Joanna Bacalso), a co-worker who later falls in love with her midwife.

There is some real comic potential here, as well as a decent moral. The movie also shows the further erosion of some ethnic hang-ups that have hung around in Hollywood far too long. The most attractive thing about it is its easy mixing of black, Asian, white and ethnically indeterminate characters (and bloodlines), and of dumb stereotypes with no-big-deal multiculturalism. It's not that everybody is the same, or that everybody gets along, but rather that the hard edge of resentment, and the ancient movie convention that interracial sex must be a Big Issue, seem to have dissolved.

Which would be exciting if ''My Baby's Daddy'' were actually any good. Having established its premise and set in motion an overloaded plot, the picture lurches this way and that, evoking more restlessness than laughter and more boredom than pathos. The hard work of energetically hammy performers like Mr. Anderson, Ms. Parker and Method Man (who plays G's jailbird cousin, No Good) is squandered by lackluster writing and inept pacing.

Mr. Griffin, whose character is meant to be the most upstanding and responsible of the three, can't seem to stay focused. He toggles from nerd to player and back again without rhyme or reason.

Meanwhile, most of the jokes settle into the part of the humor spectrum between stale and moldy, trying to wring a few more laughs out of infantile incontinence, geriatric flatulence and the difficulty some Asians can have with certain consonant sounds.

'My Baby's Daddy'' is rated PG-13. It has some swearing, implied drug use and implied premarital sex.

MY BABY'S DADDY
Directed by Cheryl Dunye; written by Damon (Coke) Daniels, Eddie Griffin, David Wagner and Brent Goldberg; director of photography, Glen MacPherson; edited by Andy Blumenthal; music by Richard Gibbs; production designer, Andrea Stanley; produced by Matt Weaver, Happy Walters and Mr. Griffin; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 86 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.